Eye Ache.

Tattooed my poor pigskin for 3 hours today. Got eye, hand and neck ache!
Lightweight!

Someone was asking me about how you tattoo on pigskin, so here goes;
Place on desk, on some kitchen paper. Give it a good clean with dettol, to get rid of the grease...(nice! Apparently, this is very similar to holidaymakers who come for a tattoo and tell you they don't have any suncream on...but they do.)
Carbon up with design of your choice. Then tattoo as normal. Apart from, it's completely different to an actual human.

It is good to stretch. It makes a bit of a row if you push too hard and don't get the throw*
on your machine right, because then it presses into the stainless steel worktop. I am reliably informed that this doesn't happen with real people.

Pigskin smells - it's a subtle, sweet smell which at first, is not unpleasant. However, 3hours of pulling it, leaning on it and generally warming it up, produces a sickly, cloying stench, guaranteed to make you feel bilious.

Pigskin doesn't wriggle, wince, complain, question you, tell you how much better you could be doing it, scratch, move in any way, whimper or complain afterwards. It is also, perfectly flat.
But it also can't tell you when you are going in too deep, pushing or churning the fuck out of it whilst trying to colour it in.

Am going to try and find a tube, to wrap the pigskin round to make a little false arm....there's nowt creepy in that, is there? Maybe I'll just carry on and make a pigskin man......I can sit him on my sofa and tattoo him in front of the telly.....
Anyhoo.......

But today, i did a few things i liked. Some shading on my sister's bird came out nicely. Some lines on a woman's head were good and I did my first cherry blossom. ( all these are in my pigskin slideshow....click on the pic on the right.)

Sven and I had a little singsong to the radio. Rose gave me a nosestud. Good times.
Am there Friday and saturday, can't wait.

*Throw - technical term!! Means how far out of the grip, the needles protrude - and so how far they can dig into YOU!!

xx